Why Reputation Management is So Essential in an Online World

Why Reputation Management is So Essential in an Online World:

The simple fact of the matter is that people do not like to be
"sold to" anymore. Sadly, this can make things fairly difficult if it
is literally your job to do exactly that on a daily basis.

Consider a few of the following statistics, outlining exactly
how most people are likely to come into contact with your brand for the first
time:

●According to one study, the vast
majority of all online experiences begin with a search engine. That search
engine is usually Google, which still owns between 65% and 70% of the total
worldwide market share.

●According to research obtained by imFORZA, 70%
of the links that users click on are organic - meaning that they're ignoring
all of the paid ads that usually appear right at the top and are instead trying
to get at the heart of the more organic results.

So what does this tell us? People are growing very impatient,
very quickly, with traditional advertising methods. Not only are they ignoring
paid ads when they can, they're taking the extra step of blocking them when the
opportunity presents itself. This is a trend that shows absolutely no intention
of slowing down anytime soon, either.

What, exactly, does that leave you with? Thankfully, the answer
is simple: your reputation.

In a Lot of Ways, Your Reputation is All You Have

The term "reputation," especially on the Internet,
invokes a whole lot more than just whether or not your business has good or bad
reviews on a site like Yelp. It's literally the feeling someone gets when they
think about your brand, or encounter one of your products or services moving
forward.

These days, it's come to describe the deep, emotional connection
(or lack thereof) that you have with your target audience. If you're able to
positively influence that, all the ad blocking programs in the world won't be
able to stop the progress you're able to make.

Once again, consider the following statistics about reputation
management in the online world:

●91% of consumers in
North America who responded to a survey said that they read
online reviews to learn more about a business before making a purchase. People
regularly check out Google Reviews, Yelp and just about any other customer
feedback system that you can think of - not necessarily to learn about the
products and services, but to learn more about the company and the people who
work there.

●In another study, 89% of shoppers
say that they stopped buying from a particular brand after a poor customer
service experience - even if they didn't really have a problem with the product
or service itself.

●The most damning statistic of all is ultimately
the following: nearly eight out of every ten Internet users in the United
States say that some piece of negative information they read online made them
change their mind about a purchasing decision.

But again - even though reviews are important, they are not the
only thing that goes into determining what people feel when they think about or
encounter your brand. There are other steps that you can take to improve this
essential bedrock that is your reputation.

Think about the types of materials that you're regularly
creating with a tool like Visme, for example
(which in transparency, I’m the founder of). Feeding back into the larger idea
of "reputation as customer service," instead of using Visme to create
straight marketing materials you should be using it to create helpful
educational resources, instead.

Don't just use Visme to visualize your product's spec
sheet. Or tap into this free videos series on how to
create beautiful visual content without being a designer. Show them
encountering real problems that people might have and show in full detail how
to overcome them.

This will allow that video to transcend the status of
"promotional tool" and move into something much more valuable.

The same is true of the presentations that you create, too.
Don't create presentations with the primary goal of selling - again, people
don't want that anymore. Think about topics that you can use to build
presentations around that will help, that will educate and that will inform.

This won't just allow you to create better materials that people
want to experience. It will also have the added benefit of helping to establish
your brand reputation as one of a company that actually cares about the success
of its users.

You don't just want their money - you want them to actually be
better off after they've started a relationship with your brand than they were
before. Your reputation plays into how true this is and the materials that you
create can in turn feed into that reputation.

Reputation Management
is Active:

Building this type of reputation, however, isn't something that
you can just do once and forget about. Because this concept is so essential to
your ongoing success, it essentially demands an ongoing effort, too.

Think about it like this: you will make mistakes, particularly
as you start to experiment with the ways in which you're reaching out to your
audience on social media. How strong your reputation is will directly affect
how easy it is for you to bounce back from those mistakes.

In the end, every piece of collateral that you create, every
conversation you start and every action you execute needs to begin from the
same place: "how will this affect the way people see me?"

Not "how many products will this sell?" or "how
will this increase my click through rate?" "How will this particular
action positively impact my reputation today?"

If you're able to master that, everything else that you seek
will essentially fall into place on its own.

About the Author:

Payman Taei is the founder of Visme, an easy-to-use online tool to create engaging
presentations, infographics, and other forms of visual content. He is also the
founder of HindSite Interactive, an award-winning
Maryland digital agency specializing in website design, user experience and web
app development.

Why Reputation Management is So Essential in an Online World
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